The Archer's Paradox - The Travis Fletcher Chronicles (3 page)

The Moon was now behind them and the ship was well clear of the gravity wells created by the planet and its satellite. The fusion engines had accelerated the ship to its optimal cruising speed of around 200 000Km/s or 66% of the speed of light. As the ship accelerated, the RAM scoop had to be gradually reduced in size to compensate for the increased drag. Although the fusion engines could be pushed further, the law of diminishing returns took over and the ship would start burning more fuel than it gathered due to the increased drag and reduced RAM scoop size.

The party atmosphere and air of excitement continued to grow in the bar as all eyes turned to the void in front as the fusion engines were throttled back and the RAM scoop reduced to a mere one hundred kilometre radius. The lights in the bar dimmed enough to accentuate the view outside.

The Mercenary looked up and faced the front of the craft. “Do you like firework displays?” he asked “Because you are going to love this!” His face lit up in a rare moment of simple joy, this was his universe and he loved showing it off.

“What’s happening?” she queried, picking up on The Mercenary’s sudden enthusiasm.

“They’re about to kick in the Compression Drive.” The Mercenary explained. She gave him a puzzled look. “We can’t,” he paused for a moment as he remembered their overly theatrical arrival then continued, “correction: we shouldn’t jump to hyperspace inside a solar system. It is a very violent act and the effect can be felt for millions of miles. In a crowded system a badly planned entry or exit can cause havoc. It would take about eight days to clear the solar system using the main fusion drive; with the Compression Drive we can do it in one without breaking a sweat.”

“We are going faster than light?” The Journalist asked in anticipation, her stomach lurching in a mixture of excitement and apprehension.

“Travelling faster than light is impossible,” The Mercenary corrected her, “but we can bend the rules a little.” The Journalist looked confused. “Watch, and I’ll explain later.”

He indicated the front view. She followed his direction where millions of specks of light filled the view, not just white as on first glance, but subtle yellows, reds and blues, all steady with no atmosphere to distort the view and enhanced by the transparent material making up the window. Lying over the black velvet were deep magentas and purples of distant dust clouds, picked out by the rapidly retreating sun. She wondered at the beauty and majesty of the greatest act of creation and destruction being enacted before her. How many of those distant points of light still exist? Which ones had died long ago? How many are too new for their light to have reached them yet? How many had inhabited planets orbiting them? The eternal question that had kept writers and scientists arguing for years and she was going to find out. Her heart suddenly began to beat faster and adrenalin coursed round her body as she digested the enormity of her thoughts. She was no trained astronaut or scientist; she was just a television journalist and minor celebrity, yet here she was, embarking on the adventure only dreamed about by scientists, children and science-fiction addicts for generations. She suddenly felt how inadequate her journalistic training was to describe what she saw. “I never knew that there could be so many stars and so many colours. Even space is not just black. I could look at that all day.” It was a lame comment not worthy of the moment, but she had to say something. The Mercenary gave a half smile and sipped his vodka.

She mused idly at the world she had left behind. Since man had understood what the stars were, many had imagined and written stories about life on other planets, many others strove to prove that the human race was alone in the universe, or at least out of reach of any other sentient race. A few weeks ago all speculation had ended at the arrival of a five and a half mile long spaceship along with its multitude of exotic inhabitants. There could be no secrecy, no cover-up, no ‘weather balloon’ explanations; it could be seen in orbit, in detail, with the simplest of telescopes. At night it was the brightest object in the sky. The single most momentous moment in human history had happened, and to cap it all, the most important occupant was a human from Earth. He had come to deliver a message and now he was leaving, never to return. But now, the ship had two humans on board. They had left the planet in an uproar, politicians were pointing fingers at each other and denying everything, others were trying to prove it was all a hoax or a mass hallucination, the whole of the USA was now under Martial Law, and The Mercenary’s First Officer, closest friend and lover was dead. The message had been delivered so their future was now up to them. She had chosen her future, and it did not include banal news reports, endless chat shows, cocktail parties, the inevitable obscurity that goes with being a minor celebrity and dreaming of retiring in Spain.

Without warning, a jolt ran through her body, startling her out of her reverie, not a physical discomfort, more like the feeling you get when you have suddenly remembered something important when it was too late. She winced as her stomach momentarily tightened and turned to lead, her heart seemed to stop for a long second. All the stars turned shades of blue then streaked back on all sides of the ship, like millions of copper meteor trails of varying brightness and thickness. As each trail came level with the ship, the blue faded through the colours of the rainbow to red as it passed behind.

“Wow, that’s incredible!” her momentary discomfort passed and forgotten, The Journalist jumped up and ran to the window to watch the streaks disappear to red behind the ship like a small child watching the passing scenery on a speeding train. The assembled crew toasted the void, as was the custom, and returned their attention inside. Some groups got up and joined other groups and table and chair configurations changed to accommodate the movement. There would be no further developments for some hours, so the assembled crew got down to some serious partying. In one corner, musical instruments were produced and songs were raised in strange tongues. Some danced, some clapped to the rhythm, some just leaned back to enjoy the spectacle, either inside or outside the ship. The Mercenary smiled and turned his attention back to his vodka.

After a while The Journalist returned to the table, a puzzled look on her face. “I thought you said that we cannot travel faster than light.” she said accusingly.

“We are not travelling faster than light.” The Mercenary replied flippantly. The wine had dulled her senses a little and quickened her temper; she did not like being fobbed off, so her journalistic training took over. He raised a finger in remonstration as a rebuke was forming on her lips, the Doppler Effect she had read about in a magazine somewhere was clearly visible outside. She saw his face turn to stone and felt the icy blast of his stare as he caught her intent. She pulled herself up short. She had witnessed the result of The Mercenary being called a liar before. She swallowed hard, sweat beading over her top lip. What she would normally use as a throwaway line or as a challenge to have something explained to her was tantamount to calling The Mercenary a liar and could, in her new life, have more serious and lasting consequences. Star, lying somewhere in the bowels of this huge craft with a hole through her chest and heart was testimony to that. She felt sick and turned away. The Mercenary remained silent and impassive as she gathered her shattered wits and thoughts together.

“How can it look like we are travelling faster than light,” she nodded outside, “but you say that it is impossible? You did say you would explain later.” she finished lightly but still shaking.
Good recovery
, she congratulated herself,
just be more careful next time
.

“Yes you should.” said The Mercenary quietly. The Journalist looked at him, startled. “The Compression Drive,” he continued without apology or explanation, “as the name suggests, compresses a corridor of space for us to travel through. Rather like all the atmosphere in this room being compressed into a gas cylinder: same volume of gas but less space to move through.”

She nodded her understanding but clearly did not.

“Inside the cylinder, we are travelling at less than light speed,” he continued, “but outside, it looks like we are going faster than light.” he paused for a moment to think. “Imagine a very long, speeding train and you riding a motor cycle very fast through
it
.” he began. “You are only doing one hundred kilometres per hour but the train is going at two hundred.” he continued, moving his hands in explanation. “The net result is that you are travelling at three hundred kilometres an hour.”

Light dawned; she remembered a similar conversation with an old boyfriend at three in the morning after drinking far too much wine. The boyfriend did not last much after the wine was finished, but somehow the conversation reared up from her sub conscious. “Just like Warp Drive on Star Trek!” she interjected. The Mercenary winced visibly.

“However, compressing or warping space, if you insist,” he corrected himself acidly, “is all straight forward, but you still need forward motion so we still need to have the fusion drive lit to push us through.” The Journalist looked puzzled, he indicated his vodka glass. “How can I move this glass from one end of the table to another?” she shrugged and pushed at the glass tentatively with one finger. “Just so, now no matter what I do here,” he waved his hands in front of the glass, “it will not move unless you push it. The Compression Drive just manipulates space, it does not cause motion. Now do you understand?”

The Journalist nodded.
Not quite like Star Trek then
.

“No.” said The Mercenary.

“I thought you said that was rude and unforgivable.” she shot back accusingly.

“The wine is making you lose some control and you’re starting to babble.”

“What are they singing about.” she hastily changed the subject to shift the focus away from herself to a group of around twenty people, male and female in equal numbers. They were all tall, nearly two and a half metres, with elongated heads, huge eyes and had well-tanned skin indicating a predominance of outdoor living. The song sounded mournful but with an underlying feeling of hope.

“In remembrance of happier times:” he replied, “lost loves, dancing naked in the moonlight, swimming in bottomless azure lakes, making love under a cloudless sky, remembering friends, family. Simple pleasures they can no longer enjoy.”

“Happier times, are they not happy?”

“They are the last of the Arcturans, their planet was devastated by a war they never asked for or played any part in.”

The Journalist had seen a couple of Arcturans before but had never had a chance to speak to any of them. She indicated that The Mercenary should tell her more.

He nodded and began, as if he had told the tale a number of times before. “They come from Arcturus 2, a beautiful planet with an abundance of natural resources and perfect climate. I suppose you could call it Paradise.” he paused a moment to reflect, then continued. “Although they had a complex civilisation, their culture was to live with the land rather than from it. They had developed highly efficient forms of energy production including orbiting solar panels and had no need to burn their world to fuel their industry, so there was very little pollution. Unfortunately, they had two neighbouring planets in the same system, Arcturus 1 and Arcturus 3. Arcturus 1 was closer to the sun and therefore much hotter and arid, Arcturus 3 was further out and colder. Both Arcturus 1 and Arcturus 3 were rapidly running out of their natural fuels and polluting their atmospheres. They regarded their neighbour with a high degree of jealousy. Both planets attempted to annex their neighbour for their own consumption. There was a long and bloody war using some weapons that should never have been invented. The peaceful Arcturans had no means of self-defence and just got caught in the crossfire. Eventually the atmosphere became so poisoned and the water so polluted by the by-products of war and biological agents that the whole planet became useless as a commodity, but the warring factions still carried on.” His voice became tinged with futile anger. “We picked up a desperate plea for help but arrived too late to make a difference. By the time we made orbit, there were only a few small communities high in the mountains, with no more than a few tens of thousands left, and a lot of those were in a terminal condition.”

The Journalist was aghast. “What did you do?”

“The only thing we could: we evaluated the situation to assess which of the warring parties was the aggressor, then blew the crap out of anything that flew and carried a weapon, both in orbit and in the atmosphere. We ended that war in less than ten rotations of that planet. The ground troops would die off eventually without food, clean water, breathable air and protection from all the poisons they had inflicted on the world.”

“Revenge?” The Journalist was startled, “That does not sit well on you.”

“No, we were furious at the stupidity of it all, but revenge is not our way, not even on behalf of another. We were there to protect the true inhabitants against aggression; even though it was a futile gesture, on our part it did feel good. For good measure we visited both Arcturus 1 and Arcturus 3 and took out any orbiting military ships or space docks we found and left warnings of dire consequences if any vessel were to find its way to Arcturus 2 in the future. An empty threat, but satisfying none the less.”